Prairie Ramblings

Lifestyles of the Rural Rich & Famous

By Tracy Sayler
Prairie Grains Editor
tsayler@prairieagcomm.com.com

Just in time for the 2004 harvest came Top Producer magazine (motto: Focusing On the Big Shots Who Matter, Not Hayseeds Like You) with the cover article “Grain Farmers Expect a Banner Year-Where to Stash Your Windfall.”

This article didn’t go over very well with farmers in the Northern Plains who dealt with drought and drown-outs, summer chills and crop kills, harvest delays and post-harvest discounts in an unforgettable growing season that many would otherwise prefer to forget.

There were other media wags that inked stories on all that new-found post-harvest farm wealth.  An Associated Press article headlined “Record Farm Income Expected” told of one farmer in Kansas, who “like many of the nation’s farmers, has a lot more money in his pocket than normal.” Hey, never mind grain prices snoozing barely above the loan rate or bunker -busting fuel and fertilizer prices. There’s gold in them thar farm hills!

So, Daddy Warbucks, in case you’ve been missing out on the info suggesting how to invest your record farm income booty, here are some further tips.  No need for thanks – just add me to your will.

Of course, now you just laugh at input costs. Tech fees? Ha! Here’s your stinkin’ tech fees, keep the change, chump.  No more skimping on herbicide rates; pump up the volume, pour on the adjuvants, and watch weeds squirm like rootworm larvae in a pool of Lorsban.

Pour anhydrous into the ground until the crop burps N and turns greener than the fat wad of bills in your wallet.  No more bin-run seed or cheap crappy hybrids.  Nothing but the best now, baby – certified seed and the latest hybrids with more stacked genes than Pamela Anderson.

Operating loan, shmoperating loan. Like Mr Drysdale in the Beverly Hillbillies, the bank kisses your hairy butt now. Go ahead and give your ag lender a wedgie, he’ll just bend over and beg for another. The last thing they want is for you to move your Jed Clampett-like bank account to the credit union down the road.

Now that you’re flush with cash, time to send the Massey down the road.  Buy one of those four-wheel-drive auto-steer jobbies decked out with GPS technology that you don’t understand but is sure to improve your yields anyway.  While you’re at it, buy one of those fancy track-driven combines with a custom header big enough to thresh through two counties in one swoop. Heck, buy a whole fleet of combines and throw in some semi-trucks. Then offer your neighbors minimum wage to drive’em on your new custom harvesting crew.  They don’t have anything better to do anyway, now that you’ve bought up the land they rented.

And of course, with all that farm income, you’ll be able to play the futures all you want.  Go long! Go short! Go long again! Buy pork bellies! Sell pork bellies! You’ll be able to corner the market faster than Martha Stewart can bake a cellblock soufflé.

As any guy who marries a ketchup heiress will tell you (it’s pronounced Ter-a-sah, not Ter-ee-suh, get it right peasant!) wealth begats wealth, and the investment gains you make in the futures market will put you in a whole new class of wealth entirely.  Hedonistic innovations and luxuries that not even Hugh Hefner or the editors at Popular Mechanics could fathom are now at your fingertips. Porta potties on every field corner. Your own personal jet plane to run for parts.  A retractable dome to deflect hail and keep the whole farm a comfy 74 degrees year-round.

Buy off Congressmen like the best of any Halliburton lobbyist. Faster than you can write a seven-figure check to the Tom DeLay re-election campaign, they’ll appropriate funds to blacktop your gravel road and relocate the county FSA office closer to your farmstead – heck, maybe even on your farmstead, right next to the high rise you put up for the migrant farm help.

Now, only the finest things in life will do. Cashmere, caviar and Cuban cigars. French poodles and Rolex watches. Weekly Botox treatments. Cow horns at the front of your limo. Your own personal entourage.  Lunch with Oprah.

Equip your new LA digs with the world’s most expensive privy, which according to Forbes isrop $6,000 on a shower curtain, just like the corrupt former head of Tyco International did while Stay at The Atlantis on  the world’s most expensive hotel suite at $25,000 per night (Dine at Masa in New York, regarded by Forbes as the most expensive restaurant in the U.S., with tasting menus that start at $300 per person. Heck, many families don’t spend that much on groceries over an entire month. But a $300 cocktail snack is nothing for lifestyles of the rural rich and famous – pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon?